by D. J. Butler
“Sort of he give you the gift of English.” Cal laughed. “But you ain’t Simon Sword now, right?”
“Nee, Ik ben hem niet,” Hop agreed, and Cal nodded in relief.
“Well,” Cal said, “I’m right glad to have you along.”
“Dank je,” Hop answered with a disheveled grin.
“If you two have finished plighting your troth to one another,” the chevalier called, “free me. I’ve lost feeling in my legs.”
“I can’t free you jest yet,” Cal answered, “but iffen you promise to be good, I reckon I could sit you up and tie you to a tree.”
* * *
Sarah awoke to the feeling of arms around her. She started, panicking—
“Whoa!” Cal whispered. “Jest relax, Sarah, I got you!”
She lay wrapped in blankets and coats, propped against Calvin’s chest, and he held her tightly. Before her blazed a small fire. Across the flames, Sir William sat on a fallen trunk wearing just breeches, boots, and his floppy black hat. Even half-naked, he looked formidable, his chest and arms heavily muscled, scarred, and covered with iron-gray hair. His right arm and chest were bandaged, and he held a bottle of whisky from which he sipped while Cathy Filmer dug a bullet out of his left shoulder.
“How’s the frog?” Sir William called out, and then Sarah realized he was addressing the Dutchman. Sarah shuddered, but only for a moment—her witchy eye was unbound and she saw instantly that the Heron King was gone, and Jacob Hop’s aura glowed bright, white, and healthy. He sat facing away from the fire at a right angle, a pistol in each hand, aiming them both at the Chevalier of New Orleans, tied to a tree.
“Ja, he’s good,” Hop answered cheerfully. Sarah was pleased to hear his thick Dutch accent.
“You awake?” Cal held her close, closer than he ever had, closer than anyone had ever held her. His nearness frightened her a little, but his presence also felt warm and comfortable.
Sarah felt her satchel around her waist and she pushed away her coverings to check it, reassuring herself that it held the Orb, the Crown, and the Heronplow; they were there, on a bed of fresh green grass.
“Yes,” she said, “and I feel like hell.”
Cal relaxed his grip.
“Your Majesty,” Sir William greeted her, raising the bottle in salute. “I would rise and bow, but I fear doing so might cause my physician to stab me.”
“It might indeed, Sir William,” Cathy agreed, but she stopped her work to curtsy to Sarah, bloody knife in her hand. “Welcome back, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you.” Sarah felt like a corn doll lying too near the fire.
“You all right?” Cal wanted to know.
She nodded, though it was a lie. “What happened?” She gestured to the trussed up Chevalier. “Where are the others?”
“We killed the other Lazars.” Cal shrugged.
“Good riddance,” Sarah said.
“Your…men, your soldiers,” Cal continued, “the beastfolk, they made short work of the gendarmes, and then Bill, well, he charged down the hill at the dragoons and he run ’em off.”
“Alone?” Sarah asked.
Sir William saluted her with his bottle again. “The odds were but twenty-four to one, ma’am. They never had a chance.” He took a modest sip. “And they were kind enough to leave us a store of supplies.”
Sarah laughed; it hurt her to do so, from her scalp to her toes, but she was so happy and relieved to be alive that she almost enjoyed the pain. She sat up, carefully not disentangling herself from Calvin or pushing him away.
“What about Father Angleton?” she pressed.
“Gone,” Cal told her. “He run hisself off without any help. And Cathy knifed him, in the bargain.”
“He was trying to resurrect the Creole, I think.” Cathy finally pried the ball from Sir William’s shoulder and tossed it into the fire. “A bit of well-placed silver changed his plan.”
Sarah was sorry she’d missed it. “We need to set a watch, to make sure he doesn’t creep back in the night.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sir William agreed, “it’s done. In the morning, when you’ve rested, I’ll introduce you to your new guard.”
Sarah shivered.
“In the morning, as well, you can give us direction,” the old soldier added. “Whether we ride for Cahokia, for instance, or whether you wish some or all of us to ride…elsewhere.”
“Thank you for keeping my brother’s location from me, Sir William,” Sarah managed to say, with an effort. She took one of Calvin’s hands in her own. “Please continue to do so. We’ll ride north tomorrow morning.”
“They’s beans iffen you want ’em.” Cal pointed with his free hand to a pot hunkered into the coals of the fire. “And hard bread and bacon.”
Sarah shook her head. “I doubt my stomach’d handle ’em right now, Cal,” she said, “but you’re sweet to offer. Is there water?”
Cal had water to hand. He brought her a plate of beans, too, despite her reservations, and Sarah managed to get down a couple of spoonfuls.
* * *
Ezekiel’s leg hurt where the woman had stabbed him. He’d wrapped the wound, but he hadn’t had time to apply any healing gramarye. He ran, staggering through bony woods as the air grew chill.
He had walked away from his vision of the Lord Protector the night before feeling strong, healthy, full of tingling, smoky power. It was part of Cromwell’s gift, along with the specific magic the Necromancer had taught him. His raising of Daniel Berkeley as a Lazar (like Elijah raising the widow’s son, like Jesus calling Lazarus from the tomb—Cromwell’s words) had cost him, and he’d spent the rest of his strength in the battle.
The battle he’d lost.
Ezekiel stumbled north and east, thrashing his way through the trees and wiry thickets of brush on the high ground overlooking the Ohio River. If he kept the Ohio on his right, he’d eventually reach Free Imperial Youngstown. Of course, that was hundreds of miles away; he would hit towns long before that, and likely a Company stockade, or some Imperial outpost.
This was the Ohio. Pacification garrisons should be easy to find.
He stopped, standing on crisp dry leaves in a small clearing. Did he really want to find an Imperial garrison? Habit made him think of himself as an Imperial servant, as chaplain to the Philadelphia Blues. But the Blues were shattered and Ezekiel had failed Thomas Penn.
Ezekiel had also failed the Lord Protector.
Did he have a master now?
Ezekiel stared up at the night sky, a splotch of darkness overhead glittering with distant stars. Could he still be God’s servant? He had been, once, but for a long time he had had earthly business to attend to. And in the furthering of that earthly business, Ezekiel had done things men might see as crimes.
He collapsed to his knees. He must still be a servant of God, he must. He had only ever wanted to do good. He served the Lord Protector, and Cromwell’s designs were godly, righteous, perfect. He sought to end death. He would undo the Fall of Adam, like a second Christ, a greater Savior, the author of a more perfect work of salvation.
And Ezekiel had failed him.
“Help me!” Ezekiel croaked, and fell sobbing to the hard earth.
“I am here, Father,” the harsh voice of the Lord Protector honked, and Ezekiel realized that he sobbed upon a pair of riding boots.
Ezekiel looked up into a gaze that was kind and imperious at the same time. “I’ve failed, My Lord.” He wept.
“Hush,” the Lord Protector calmed him. “Thou hast fought a brave battle. The long war yet stretches ahead of thee.”
“But…but, My Lord, the Witchy Eye lives.” Some part of him yearned to be chastised.
“Yes,” Cromwell agreed, “and I wished her dead. Still, the soldiers of my servant Thomas Penn yet occupy the Ohio, and it is a good thing that Sarah Elytharias Penn has been forced into taking up her father’s banner so soon.”
“My Lord?”
“Yes,” Cromwell mused. “She is young and
unready, yet she thrusts herself into the cockpit of power like a starving dog into a stewpot. Chaos must result. Thomas will have to increase his efforts in the Pacification, more troops must be sent to the Ohio. All thy work, my servant Ezekiel, redounds to the greater good.”
The Lord Protector made it sound almost as if he had planned for Sarah to survive.
“My Lord.” Ezekiel bowed his head. “Should I…? Should I then rejoin Thomas Penn in Philadelphia, and serve him again as chaplain?”
“I think not,” the Lord Protector replied. “There is work for thee in the Crown Lands.”
“The Crown Lands?” Ezekiel was puzzled.
Cromwell nodded solemnly. “Dost thou not recall what the monk Thalanes told thee?”
Ezekiel thought back. Thalanes had been slippery, had truthfully told Robert Hooke that the Witchy Eye had slept under the roof of the Bishop of New Orleans, but had omitted to mention that most of the bishop’s palace was occupied by a cloister of wizard-priests. Ezekiel had managed to avoid falling into that trap, but he couldn’t remember the other two answers Thalanes had been forced to give.
“Lee,” he finally recalled. “Thalanes said that he had come to New Orleans to find the man William Lee.”
“Correct,” Cromwell said. “Dost thou know William Lee?”
“Yaas.” Ezekiel tried to put together the pieces of a puzzle he sensed the Lord Protector had already solved. “Not well. I know him by his fame. He was captain of the Blues before Daniel Berkeley. He left Philadelphia shortly after I arrived. I’d heard he’d gone back home, to Johnsland, but I suppose after that he went to New Orleans.”
Cromwell nodded again, smiling. Ezekiel shivered in the cold, wishing he had his cloak; in his haste he had left it with all his things at the foot of Wisdom’s Bluff. “What else?”
Ezekiel shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
“My servant Robert Hooke asked about the Witchy Eye’s plans after she left New Orleans.”
A thunderbolt struck Ezekiel Angleton in the back of his head. “Her brother. She was going to go get her brother.”
“Yes.”
“If she came to New Orleans to get William Lee, it was because Lee knew where to find her brother.” He felt like a fool for not having made this connection earlier.
“It seemeth likely.”
“Lee hid her brother fifteen years ago, in the same way that Thalanes hid her.”
“I believe so,” Cromwell agreed. He was smiling, and Ezekiel basked in the approval.
“In Johnsland.”
“Perhaps,” Cromwell said, “and perhaps not. But a badly disfigured fifteen-year-old boy is not an easy thing to hide.”
“And then the boy can be used against his sister.”
“In many ways,” Cromwell agreed. “But I must send someone to Johnsland I can trust.”
“Send me, My Lord,” Ezekiel begged.
“But I cannot allow thee to freeze to death on the Ohio.” Cromwell had a bundle Ezekiel hadn’t noticed, and he now shook it out. It was a coat, a long, tattered brown coat that smelled of mildew and the grave. Cromwell draped it over Ezekiel’s shoulders and Ezekiel shuddered into the moldering fabric, repulsed by the Lazar stink but grateful for the warmth.
“Get thee to Johnsland, my servant Ezekiel,” the Lord Protector said. “Find thou the Witchy Eye’s brother.”
Ezekiel nodded; he had no more words.
He waited, expecting more direction, but there was only silence.
Ezekiel looked up, and found that he was alone.
“Lucy,” he croaked. There was no answer.
Finally, with heavy legs but determination in his heart, he lifted his feet and began again to make his way along the river.
* * *
The whisky (consumed only in moderate doses) dulled Bill’s pain enough to help him sleep, but old habits of command he had thought long dead woke him, and sent him hobbling to the perimeter to check his sentries.
He had never commanded beastfolk before, but it didn’t make him uncomfortable; he had seen too many beasts with men’s faces to be bothered by one that had the face of a coyote. Frankly, after exchanging passwords with the warriors on guard and ascertaining that all was in good order, he felt Sarah’s beastmen were less foreign to him than, say, the French. They were fierce and they did their duty, and Bill looked forward them to drilling them.
Would they ever be able to use firearms effectively, though? Many of the beastmen had eyes on opposite sides of their heads, which must limit their ability to estimate range. Perhaps he could divide them, and arm with pistols only the ones whose eyes faced forward, and who had fingers and thumbs.
Bill had not known what to make of the little Dutchman now, and had spent the evening avoiding too much conversation with the man. One part of him wanted to call the fellow Jake and tell him war stories, but another part felt like a wolf with its paw mangled from a trap, wary at scenting what he thought might be another.
Standing outside the firelight at the edge of the stone plaza, looking along the steep slope down which earlier in the day he’d charged to a likely death, Bill heard a sound. Turning, he saw Long Cathy, and on impulse he put his arm around her.
“I’m afraid the better view is on the other side, ma’am,” he apologized. “From here all one can see is the forest.”
“That’s the Ohio,” she said. “It must be full of Imperial soldiers.”
“I expect it is,” he agreed. “And traders, of the Imperial Ohio Company and the Dutch Ohio Company both. Also Firstborn, and beastkind, and bandits, and wild animals, and even a few ordinary people.” Her body melted into his.
His wounds hurt him less when she was present.
They watched the darkness for a few minutes, listening to the slow chirping of crickets. “I’ve been told that you can ascertain the temperature by counting the speed of a cricket’s chirp,” Bill said eventually, “but I’m damned if I can remember how.”
“That’s a farmer’s skill,” Cathy observed.
“I’ve never been much of a farmer,” Bill conceded, thinking of the perpetually chaotic state of his family lands, the spiraling debts and unkept ledgers, the shouting matches with his steward. “Mine are other gifts.”
There was a long silence. “Bill,” Cathy finally said, “I need to know there’s a chance for us to be together.”
Bill paid very careful attention to his breathing and did not let himself sigh. “I hope there is.” He turned Cathy Filmer to face him and looked into her eyes. “I must follow my queen. For now that means my road lies north, into the Ohio. When she is safely on her throne, I must go to Johnsland and discover what has become of my…of my family. It pains me to say this, but my life will be much the simpler if I discover that Sally, my wife, has been silent these years because she is dead. I will not say that I hope that she is dead; that would not be a desire fitting for a Christian man. But I do hope that my discoveries, whatever they may be, permit me to return and be with you.”
Cathy looked up at him with blues eyes glistening. “I love you, William Lee.” Bill felt jolts of electricity racing up his spine. “My road is with you.”
“I love you too, Catherine Howard.”
They kissed then, and it was a long time before they returned to the fire.
* * *
In the morning, they gave the Chevalier of New Orleans his pistols, sword, money, and a spare horse, and they bid him farewell.
He climbed slowly into his saddle, stiff from a night spent tied to a tree. Chafing his wrists, he bowed his head slightly to Sarah. “You’re as gracious in victory as you are formidable in action, Your Majesty.”
“Yes,” Sarah agreed, “I am.”
“I plan to send my embassies soon, notwithstanding our…recent misunderstandings.”
She arched her eyebrow at him and said nothing.
The chevalier nodded and turned his horses, and Sarah and her companions watched him ride down the bluff and disappear into the fore
st. The instant he was out of sight, Jacob Hop cleared his throat.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “Ik ook have something Ik moet discuss with you.”
“Mr. Jacob Hop,” she answered, “what am I to do with you?”
“Ja,” he admitted, “Ik moet look very strange to you.”
“No,” she disagreed, gazing at his steady white aura with her witchy eye, “you look very normal.”
“Ja,” he said, “dat is good.” He shifted from foot to foot for a moment while Sarah gazed at him, then cleared his throat again. “Your Majesty, Ik have a message.”
“Ja?” Sarah asked, then corrected herself. “I mean, yes? Who from, Mr. Hop? From Simon Sword?”
“Nee,” Hop said. “Ik have not seen him since you have. From the dead man. From René du Plessis, the chevalier’s seneschal.”
Sarah’s interest was piqued. “What did Mr. du Plessis wish you to tell me?”
Hop dug into the pocket of his black breeches and pulled out a medallion, offering it to Sarah. She took it and examined it in the palm of her hand; it was a cheap disk, made of bronze, and it bore a cluster of the letters T, C, and B, with a stylized lightning bolt through them. There was dried blood on the medallion, crusted in and around the letters and the bolt, and it threw the carving into a higher relief. She thought she had seen the symbol somewhere before, but couldn’t quite place it.
“What’s this?” she asked.
Hop shrugged. “Ik know niet. He was dying, and the chevalier left him, and he put het into my hand. He told me two things. He said ‘tell the Witchy Eye that she moet say to Franklin: the sword has gone back.’”
“Franklin?” Sarah didn’t know any Franklin that she could think of. “Who is Franklin? Which Franklin?”
Hop shook his head.
“It’s interesting that the message should mention the name Franklin, Your Majesty,” Cathy offered. “That device is a sort of heraldic image of the Franklin family. It reminds the viewer of the four greatest accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin.”